


so long lives this and this gives life to thee

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, I'll add more tags as makes sense/as necessary, TRoS Spoilers, background finnrose - Freeform, the soft epilogue we all deserve, there might be angst but it is not heavy angst it is me fixing tros angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21895612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: His smile fades and he falls to the ground, his head hitting the ground with a sharp crack.“Ben!” The yell echoes around them in the darkness and Rey lurches forward, her hands scrabbling over his face, his neck, trying to find a pulse.She bursts into tears when she finds it.  She doesn’t know why she’s crying.He’s alive.———In which Ben's Force Sensitivity—and not his life—was given to save Rey.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 378
Kudos: 1341
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Once_and_Future_Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Once_and_Future_Thing/gifts).



> This is the weekend for unfinished and/or unbeta'd fic to get posted. So I'm posting chapter one of this and hope to bang out the rest quickly tomorrow/in the next few days. It won't be long but I hope it'll help us all. 
> 
> Thanks to Jeeno for looking this one over. Thank you to the_once_and_future_thing for the idea!

His smile fades and he falls to the ground, his head hitting the ground with a sharp crack. 

“Ben!” The yell echoes around them in the darkness and Rey lurches forward, her hands scrabbling over his face, his neck, trying to find a pulse.

She bursts into tears when she finds it. She doesn’t know why she’s crying.  _ He’s alive _ . 

But she doesn’t know what to heal. His head, yes—he just hit it. And there is bruising on his body from fighting, and his leg, there’s something wrong with his leg. It’s easier to heal all those things than it had been to heal the cauterized wound of her lightsaber right through his gut. There are no organs to pull back together—just veins and bones and blood. 

“Ben,” she whispers to him in the dark. Her hand finds his heart again. It’s there, thrumming in his chest through his shirt. “Please wake up. Please.”

_ I healed him. I healed him.  _

_ He brought you back, and had his Force drained.  _

She reaches out with the Force, searching for that angry hurricane of power that surrounded him.

But all she finds is stillness.

Nothing.

-

Ben hears her crying in the distance. It’s fuzzy in his ears, far away, echoing. But he hears her crying. 

“Rey,” he tries to say but his lips won’t move. When had they gotten this heavy? His eyelids too—they won’t open. It’s like there is a weight on his chest—different from the one he’d known all his life. He tries to reach for her but his arm is heavy. He tries to something, to anything, but he can’t. He’s less than useless.

He’s weak.

He tries to reach out to her with the Force but it’s like—

It’s gone. 

It’s just gone.

-

A blast overhead expands everything.

The world isn’t just Ben lying there unconscious and Force-less. The galaxy is fighting overhead and she has to help.

_ The fleet! There’s still time to save the fleet! _

But she can’t just leave him here like this.

“Lifting rocks,” she mutters sadly as she stands and extends a hand and—

It’s a lot. Too much. Exhausting, harder than the first time she’d tried anything like this. Whatever it was Palpatine had done to them had worked—she felt too drained to do something as simple as lift him. “Ben please,” she begs. “I’m not leaving you behind. I—”

She’d done that once and it had been hard—when she hadn’t taken his hand, when he’d been too dark to remember that there could be good and light. Now, though—he’d come back for her, he’d fought at her side, he’d—

She’d died.

The enormity of that hits her in the chest. She had died. But her heart is still beating in her chest and Ben is there next to her, unconscious and so very heavy.

She lets out an angry yell. She shouldn’t feel powerless right now! She should feel more powerful than she’s ever felt, stronger than anyone and anything. She broke the Emperor. She broke the man who broke her parents. Ben came back for her. She’s  _ alive _ .

And Ben’s eyes flutter open.

-

His throat is too dry to say anything and his lips won’t move but he sees her and that’s enough. There are tears on her face, a snarl on her lips that fades the moment her eyes lock with his. She’d been crying over him. There’s relief there. 

Her lips are on his again—she’s kissing him—again. She’d kissed him. And she  _ is _ kissing him. Now his lips can move against hers even if his arms are too heavy. He tries to lift them. His fingers only twitch.  _ At least they move _ . He twitches his toes too. Ok. That’s good. He’s not paralyzed.

He’s just heavy. Everything’s heavy.

“We have to go,” she tells him and there’s starlight in her eyes. She’s so beautiful. Beautiful and alive. The memory of her dead in his arms makes his heart squirm. She’s alive. She’s alive and she kissed him and now she wants him to come with her. “They need our help.”

“I—” he croaks.

“Ben?” she frowns as though worried he’ll say no. He can’t blame her for that.

“I need your help,” he manages. God it’s hard—physically—to say anything at all. He doesn’t care about asking for her help. He knows she’ll help him. 

“What’s wrong?” Rey asks.

“I can’t move,” he replies. “At least—” he twitches his fingers, he twitches his toes again, and he sees Rey see the movement. She nods. Then she stands and pulls him to his feet and he topples over onto her. 

“I can’t lift you with the Force,” she tells him. “I tried, but I couldn’t. It was hard. Whatever that was…” she doesn’t finish. “But I should still be able to carry you.”

And somehow she gets him onto her back and his eyelids are too heavy for his eyes to stay open so he closes them, buries his face in her neck, inhaling the sharp tang of her sweat and feeling safe and warm for the first time in his fucking life.

-

He’s heavy.

And huge.

She’s known this about him for years—since she first saw him looming out of the shadows at her on Takodana, a masked monster. She’s fought him, fought at his back, but she’s never had to carry his dead weight before and he’s  _ heavy and huge _ . His thighs are corded in her hands, his arms draping around her neck like a mantle. At least he’s not in that padded vest anymore. That thing would probably make him even heavier.

When she gets out to the ships she has to pause. There’s no way Ben can fly a fighter right now. And though his ship looks like it has a bigger cockpit, she’s also sure that Poe’s fighters overhead would blow it out of the sky the moment they saw it. So she stumbles towards Luke’s X-Wing. 

It takes all her concentration to lift him up into the cockpit before she clambers up herself. She does her best to settle him in place before settling down on his lap and lowering the hatch over her head. 

She has to hunch down, but she can still get the controllers and she eases the ship into the air.

Ben doesn’t shift underneath her. She feels his breath on the back of her neck as her knees knock annoyingly against the dashboard. His heart is beating at her back. His arms dangle limply at his sides but he is alive. She’ll take that over the heartbeat of a moment she’d thought he was dead.

“That’s Red Five!” she hears through her comlink and a chorus of cheers as she twists and swerves the X-Wing through the onslaught. 

She finds a medical frigate as quickly as she can, pulling her X-Wing into its deck. Hers isn’t the only ship there, but she is the only person who is climbing out of the cockpit with a second body.

“Who’s that?” asks someone she doesn’t know.

“Ben,” she tells them. “Please—I need a bioscan.” The rest they can work on, but what if he’s dying slowly? Her heart is hammering in her chest.

They bring Ben to a ward and plug him into the scanners. 

“All systems seem to be functioning normally,” the medic tells her. “He doesn’t seem hurt at all.”

The medic makes to remove the scanner but Rey glares at him. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? He’s—”

“Not until I say so.”

“Ma’am, that’s not—”

And Rey ignites the lightsaber in her hand and the medic backs away. 

“I’ll leave you, then,” he mumbles and scurries away down the ward to a different patient in need of his care.

Rey settles in a seat next to Ben and takes his hand in hers.

“Are you awake?” she asks him. “Squeeze if you can hear me.”

He opens his eyes again instead. They look dazed, feverish, exhausted. But his lips twitch towards a smile. Somewhere she remembers Kaydel telling Poe that it requires more muscles to frown than to smile and he should relax more. She leans forward for the third time and kisses him. It’s a quick kiss, though, and she rubs her nose against his before pressing her forehead there. “We’ll figure this out,” she tells him. “I promise, we’ll figure this out.”

His hand tightens in hers.

“I don’t think there’s anything to figure out,” he manages to say. His voice still sounds wrong. Raw. Croaky. He gives her a significant look, then says, “It’ll be easier if you—”

“Won’t it hurt?”

“Not if you’re gentle.”

She remembers him pressing into her mind. Would it be different with an invitation? She tries but for all the focus she has she can’t muster the strength to do it. “I think I’m too drained,” she tells him, her throat clogging. 

He lets out a sigh and his eyes drift closed again, his hand tightening in hers. “Rest,” he tells her. “You need it.”

“Ben—”

“You do. You died.” And his voice cracks over the word. She leans forward, throwing her free arm over his chest to pull him closer to her. She’d woken up in his arms. She’d felt safe, incandescently happy.

-

Ben lies there breathing. He’d always hated meditating. He’d never been particularly good at it.  _ I’ve been every voice in your head all your life,  _ Palpatine had told him when first he’d seen him. 

His head is empty of voices now though. It’s too quiet. It echoes—fears and anxieties. It’s gone. Everything he’s ever been is gone now. Everything he’d ever thought he could be.  _ Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way you can become who you were meant to be. _

It almost makes him laugh but his chest is too heavy for that. 

He tries twitching his toes again. Is he imagining it or is it getting easier? He tries lifting a hand and manages to brush it against Rey. Rey who is crying on his chest, who is holding him close, who wants him, who had looked at him so brilliantly in the blue light of the lightsabers before he’d been thrown into the pit.

In and out he breathes. He’s alive and she’s alive. Everything’s different but they’re alive and she’s in his arms, and he’d held her too. She’s kissed him three times.  _ I’m going to kiss her,  _ he thinks, anger flaring in him.  _ When I can make myself move, I’m going to kiss her until we can’t breathe anymore. _

How long they lie there like that, he doesn’t know. But he does hear footsteps and feels Rey shift on his chest to look up and—

“What’s he doing here.”

“He saved my life,” Rey says. “He saved all our lives, Poe.”

“And what’s he doing here?”

“He’s sick,” Rey replies evenly and Ben hears steel in her voice. He hears anger.

“He should be in a cell,” Poe says acidly. Ben remembers the inner contours of his mind. The pain of his mother dying, wanting desperately to prove himself to General Organa, his rage and defiance that he even had to fight at all. Dameron. Poe Dameron. “Or in front of a firing squad.”

And again, Ben hears the lightsaber ignite. “Don’t you dare,” Rey growls.

Silence stretches between them and Ben doesn’t have to force his eyes open to know that they’re glaring at one another.

It’s a long silence. He wonders if they’re having a silent conversation with their eyes. His mom and uncle had done that sometimes. 

Then Poe sighs. “I didn’t see you,” he says. “And when we land on Ajan Kloss, I’d better not. No one can. Got that?”

The lightsaber disengages and Rey’s hand is back in his. 

He hears footsteps and Rey whispers, “Do you think you’ll be able to walk soon? I think people will notice me if I’m carrying you.”

Ben tries to move his feet, just a wiggle of the ankles. It’s not easy but he can do it. 

“I’ll make it work.”

He brought her back to life. He can walk a few feet.

-

He is standing on his own two feet, but his motions are lurching, uncoordinated. Rey is holding his hand because his vision is blurring and his breathing is ragged and there’s this horrible pallor to his face as though he’s about to faint.  _ He just needs to rest,  _ she tells herself over and over again.  _ He just needs to rest and sleep and it will be all right. _

They lurk by the gang plank of the medical frigate. She’s wearing a dark grey cape and hood and Ben’s head is down which is about all they can manage to keep him from being noticeable. “We just need to get to the  _ Falcon _ ,” she tells him. It seems miles away, especially with all the celebrating Resistance fighters dancing around them, hugging, cheering, singing in the trees.

She catches sight of Finn. His arms are around Rose and he’s whispering something to her. A lump lodges in her throat.  _ No one can. Got that? _

She’s not going to get to say goodbye. 

“Now,” she tells Ben and her voice is harsh to her own ears. “Now, ok?”

And she leads him around the outskirts of the crowd, doing their best to stay under the cover of the trees until they reach the  _ Falcon _ . She helps Ben up the gangplank leads him to the captain’s quarters, helping him into the bed. He passes out almost at once. That much she can feel through the Force.

_ Ok. Now I just have to figure out how to fly this by myself. _

It’s as she’s settling into the pilot’s seat in the cockpit that she hears footsteps coming up the ramp. She holds her breath, hoping, praying that—

“Rey?”

It’s Finn. He’s standing there in the doorframe, his eyes steady. 

“I have to go,” she says.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“I won’t be coming back.”

“Yeah, I got that when you weren’t even going to say goodbye.” 

She looks away. A traitor tear drops down her cheek and she brushes it away angrily. “I’m coming with you,” Finn repeats, that stubborn jut to his jaw. “Rey—I need to tell you something.”

“Finn,” she begins but whatever it was she was going to say vanishes from her mind the moment he says, 

“I can feel the Force. It flows through me. Or whatever.”

Rey blinks at him.

“You’re Force Sensitive?”

“Force Sensitive. Yeah. That.”

She reaches out. It’s there. How has she never noticed it before? How had she not thought to look during her training, once she’d learned how to?

“So I’m coming with you,” Finn says. “Because I need a teacher.”

_ You need a teacher!  _ Kylo Ren had growled at her in the snow on Starkiller Base.

She can’t not tell him. Especially if he’s being stubborn and refusing to get off the ship—refusing to leave her behind. 

“Ben’s here,” she tells him. Finn’s face darkens for a moment. “He saved my life. He helped me—he—”

And the words fade away as she watches him closely, trying as hard as she can to read every line in his face, to understand what he’s thinking without pressing into his mind. 

“Do you trust him?” he asks her slowly.

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”  _ I love him.  _ But she doesn’t want the first time she says those words to be to Finn. Ben needs to hear them first.

“Ok,” he says.

“First lesson—trust your instincts because you’re helping me fly this thing.”

“Can’t Chewie do it?”

And she hears Chewie call out from the hallway,  _ We can hear everything you said. _

Finn grimaces. “I told them during the battle. Chewie and Rose are coming too.”

And they both appear in the doorway too. Rose offers Rey a smile, and Chewie tilts his head at her and she can see that  _ You were just going to leave? Just like that?  _ in his eyes.

“You trust him?” Rose asks, watching Rey closely. Rey nods, but her eyes are on Chewie. 

“He saved me,” she said. “When Leia died, he—”

_ Fine,  _ Chewie interrupts.  _ You don’t have to explain. _

“I don’t want you to hate him,” she warns.

_ I don’t hate him,  _ Chewie replies, his head tilting again.  _ I held him in my arms when he was a baby. But that doesn’t mean I’ll forgive him. _

Rey swallows. She can work with that. “That’s between the two of you.”

Chewie nods and he moves to the front of the cockpit.

Then Rey guides them to the air.

Down below, she sees BB-8 stop rolling, sees him look up, his head wiggling slightly before dropping sadly down his round belly.

_ I’m sorry,  _ she thinks as she blinks back more tears. How little could she have expected her life would change when she found that droid. She’d been waiting, waiting, waiting for her family...

_ Palpatine. Rey Palpatine.  _ She shudders.

She prefers Rey Nobody to that.

_ Rey Solo,  _ a voice in the back of her mind whispers. 

_ Later,  _ she tells the voice. Ben can barely walk, and they don’t know what’s happening with his Force Sensitivity. She’s only kissed him a few times. She hasn’t even said she loves him. She doesn’t even know where they’re going yet.

“Chewie?”

_ Yes? _

“Let’s go somewhere green.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much <3 i'm so glad you're all liking this. it's very cathartic to write, and i'm glad to know it's cathartic to read too. 
> 
> not sure how long this one's ultimately gonna be. i don't think it's gonna be mega long, but am waffling about exact length at the moment. it's a rare "writing and posting as i go" story for how i usually approach fic. but now feels like the time for that sort of thing.

It’s once they are in hyperspace that the exhaustion hits her. She’d been running on adrenaline, on sheer force of will, and when Chewie gets up from the co-pilot’s seat, he grumbles at her,  _ Rest. You look dead on your feet. _

“You have no idea,” Rey replies, taking his extended hand and standing too. Finn and Rose are sitting by the dejarik table, talking quietly. They smile at her as she passes but she doesn’t stop to talk to them. She heads straight to the captain’s quarters, and the bunk she’d put Ben in. 

He’s lying there, still as a log, but he’s breathing in and out steadily. She sits on the edge of the bunk for a moment and takes his hand. “Squeeze if you’re awake,” she tells him. He squeezes. “Squeeze if it’s all right for me to rest with you.” He squeezes again, longer than the first time and Rey’s throat clogs. She pushes him a little bit as she curls up against his side, and buries her face in his neck. He stinks of sweat and stress and seasalt. She’s sure she does too. But she doesn’t care. It’s comforting in its way. 

She wakes to his lips brushing against her forehead, his head twisted so that he could. His eyes are open and he looks less exhausted than she’s seen him look since she woke up in his arms. “Hi,” she whispers to him.

“Hi,” he replies, and it doesn’t sound like it is a struggle to talk. “Sleeping helped.”

“You slept?” she asks and he nods. 

“Woke up just a moment ago and it—I could move again.”

“Can you—?” She doesn’t know how to ask it. But Ben knows what she’s trying to say. 

“No,” he says flatly. “It’s gone.”

Rey swallows. They were a dyad in the Force. What was this supposed to mean, then? What did that mean for them now?

Rey watches him carefully and he watches her. “What now then?” she asks at last.

And his eyes get a bit blank. “Well, I’m on the run,” he says. “In one of the most famous ships in the galaxy, so we should probably scrap it for parts and—”

“No,” Rey interrupts.

He closes his eyes. “We’ll revisit.”

“No we won’t,” she says firmly. He sighs and looks away.

“I don’t know what’s next,” he says at last. “I don’t have a lot of choices, do I?”

“You can help me train Finn,” Rey says. “He’s Force Sensitive and—”

And Ben’s face twitches and she can see the way his eyes get dull and Rey’s heart lurches. She shouldn’t have suggested that. She shouldn’t have—

“Yeah,” he replies. “I guess I could do that.”

“Or we could—”

“No, that’s what we should do,” he says. “Imparting knowledge is the one thing I can do right now. Not like I have the skills for anything else at the moment, right?”

“Ben,” Rey whispers. She can see that he’s panicking. He has never been one to guard his emotions and the enormity of what has happened, what he’s lost is hitting him. He probably hadn’t thought that far ahead as he hadn’t really been able to move, open his eyes, talk, but now his breathing is getting shallow, his muscles are tense, his face is contorting in confused pain. “Ben, it’ll be alright.”

Then he’s tugging her into his arms, holding her close. He’s shaking. “You’re alive,” he whispers. “That was my choice. And I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t, but...”

She runs her hands up and down his back. “I’m alive,” she repeats. She doesn’t remember what it was to be dead. There had just been a blankness. She would have thought it would have been as powerful as being alive, but no. It was nothing at all, dying. But it had been something, waking up in his arms, seeing the forced calm on his face as he held her as though he was holding on to his own life. “And so are you. We’ll figure it out. And you  _ will _ have a choice.”

-

He shouldn’t be surprised—not really—when they land on Takodana. 

It feels fitting, standing in the doorway of the cockpit of his father’s ship watching as Chewie and Rey coast them over the water to land in the wreckage that had once been Maz’s watering hole. A pang of guilt shoots through him. He hadn’t let himself care that his men had destroyed the place. He’d been hell bent on finding the girl, and destroying anyone who’d help the Resistance that he hadn’t let himself think about sitting in a corner, reading through books that Maz had given him while she talked to his dad, the winked  _ don’t tell mom, ok kid?  _ that had accompanied a head ruffle. 

_ Ok, Dad. _

There’s moss growing on the stones now, and the colorful flags that Maz had used to decorate the place have been picked away by birds for nests. The forests would be colorful. 

_ This seemed as good a place as any,  _ Chewie tells Rey.  _ Or did you want somewhere more peopled? _

“No, this is perfect,” Rey says, smiling at him. 

“Where are we?” Rose asks.

“Takodana,” Finn tells her. “We came here after Jakku, after Han found us. It’s where—” he cuts himself off and glances back at Ben. 

“It’s where Rey and I first met,” Ben says quietly. A nicer way to say it. At the time he’d hunted her like a womp rat through the woods. She’d been slow and uncoordinated and had never seen a lightsaber. It was the only time he’d ever seen fear on her face. How he’d underestimated her. How could he have known all she’d be?

He watches Finn and Rose share a look, knows that it’s a  _ This is where he kidnapped her. How it all got started,  _ look and does his best not to get annoyed. Tries not to get jealous.

_ He has the Force and I don’t. _

He feels like he can’t walk properly. Oh, he can move his feet, and he can hold himself up. But his legs don’t move the way they used to at all. They feel heavier, slower to respond to his needs. It’s like his instincts are numbed and it makes everything harder. He dreads what it will feel like when he tries doing anything with his hands.

They descend from the Falcon and Rey takes his hand and leads him towards the lake. “I like being back here with you,” she whispers. “I feel like it’s…” she tries to find the words but she doesn’t have to. He knows what she means. Even without the Force, he knows. That’s comforting. He pulls her into his arms, her back to his chest, resting his chin against her head and she lets out a sigh. “This was where I first learned there could be beauty in the galaxy,” she whispers. 

He knows the feeling.

How long they stand like that, he doesn’t know. He distantly hears Chewie unloading camping gear that had been stowed at some point in the ship. He hears Rose and Finn helping him. If he were a good godson, he’d be helping Chewie too. But right now, he can’t let go of Rey. He takes a deep breath, and then another. 

Even the air moves differently in his lungs. It’s like his body isn’t his own anymore. Not the body he’d grown up with. And his mind is quieter than it’s ever been before. Losing Rey and then getting her back and—

Talking to his father.

_ I did have the strength to do it in the end, Dad. I did. You’d have been proud of me. I ran into a fight with just my blaster and the shirt on my back and came out alive. _

He came out alive and he came out with her. 

He can do this. He can get used to his body being different. The only good thing that had come of the way it was before was Rey, and here she is in his arms, her head tilted back slightly to rest against his shoulder, watching the sun set over the lake.

-

“All right,” Rey says, squaring her shoulders and looking at Finn. She can do this. She  _ can _ do this. She looks back at Ben. Ben’s standing with Rose, watching them, his hands at his side. He gives her a small smile.  _ You can do this. _

“Right,” she says, turning back to Finn. “So it’s a feeling.”

“A feeling,” Finn repeats. “Right in your chest.”

“In everything. A balance. What exists between and what feeds itself.” That sounded stupid. Master Skywalker had sounded so  _ smart _ when he’d been explaining it to her. Bitter and angry, sure, but at least like he knew what he was talking about. He was Luke Skywalker. And who is she? 

_ Rey. Palpatine. _

She shoves that thought out of her head. “It exists in every living being,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “That’s how I…” began realizing he could do this. Yes. Yes she knows. God why is this so hard?  _ If it were easy, anyone could do it. _

“Right,” she says for the third time. “Right.”

“It’ll be ok, Rey,” Finn says, and his hand is resting on her shoulder. “Breathe.”

She rolls her eyes. “That obvious?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Trust me, you can’t be a worse teacher than half of the commandants I trained under.”

It should be encouraging. It really should. She doesn’t even know why she feels like such an imposter. She was trained by Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. Every Jedi that had ever lived and died had helped her defeat the last Sith. She can teach Finn how to—

“Right,” she says and she turns towards the remains of Maz’s castle. “Let’s practice lifting rocks.”

And she extends her hand, feels the Force flow through her, and one of the great boulders that had once served as the foundation of the building lifts into the air. She puts it down again and turns to Finn, smiling. 

“How?” Finn asks. 

“You just do it,” she says. “Don’t overthink it.”

“Don’t overthink it, huh?” Finn says with a little roll of his eyes. “Sure. Ok.” 

He holds out a hand. She can feel him trying. “Search your feelings,” she tells him. “That balance in everything that lives. Let it flow through you, through your mind and hand, through your will.”

But nothing happens. Finn’s got sweat on his face from exertion and Rey just feels stupid. What had she even started with? Master Luke had played a cruel trick on her, but he’d barely done anything when it came to her learning how to master the Force. She had done it all herself, really. Him, and Kylo Ren pushing her, and then she’d figured out how to teach herself, or Leia had been there to answer questions…

“Let’s try something else,” she says, and she walks to the forest’s edge where she’d rested her staff. She holds out a hand and tugs the air around her and a moment later a branch of about the same size is in her hand. She hands it to Finn.

Then she attacks.

Finn’s good. She’s not surprised about that though. He’d been trained for battle in a way that Rey never had been. Oh, she’d always been able to hold her own in combat, but Finn’s body is fluid and strong as he catches every one of her attacks. So she amps it up.

She makes her kicks stronger, she jumps higher, she puts more weight into each of the strikes she makes with her staff until he’s gasping for air. “Feel it,” she tells him. “Let it power you, Finn. You can feel it.”

He ducks under one of her attacks and it happens. If she weren’t as in tune with the Force as she’s become over the years, she might have missed it, the way he jumps further than adrenaline would have allowed.

“Did you see that?” he yells happily. “Did you see that?”

“I saw it!” And she propels herself towards him, giving him the biggest hug. 

“We’ll keep doing that,” he says grinning.

“Yeah.”

“And then I’ll try lifting rocks again.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

They grin at each other happily and Rey turns to look for Ben. She’d managed to do it!

But Ben’s gone.

-

It’s no use, pretending he’s not jealous.

Because he is—very, very jealous.

It had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life, fighting with Rey. Watching her move, feeling the heat of her power flowing in the air around her. She’d been good, and strong, and ferocious, and the only person who could really hold her own against him, and she’d never really had to. He’d gone easy on her on Starkiller and he’d beaten her on Endor before his mother had died. But she’d come close to beating him. 

As he’d flown to Exegol, he’d imagined a future of sparring with her. Building a new saber for himself with a new crystal and training alongside her, their bodies moving together, their minds moving together, the Force flowing back and forth between them. And if at one point in the fight he kissed her, she’d laugh and tell him he was cheating, trying to distract her like that.

He’d never be able to spar with her like that again. Not ever. 

And he throws his fist into a tree. It hurts. A lot. And there is likely a splinter or two in his knuckles from the bark.

This is  _ not _ what he wanted. Yes, he’d chosen it. Yes it was better than living while she was gone, but watching her smile with Finn, goad him on—it makes him want to fight. And the saddest part of it is that Finn could probably beat him in the state he is in now. 

And that is the last thing he needs. 

“Hey.”

He spins around. 

Rose is standing there. She’d followed him into the woods. 

“You ok?” she asks.

He swallows. 

He has never really spoken to Rose before. They’d ridden quietly together on the ship, but he’d only barely talked to any of them. He’d sort of figured it would come with time. There was a lot to get used to. And as long as Finn and Rose and Chewie are along for the ride, rushing into… well he doesn’t know who he is anymore. So none of it had mattered.

“No,” he says. He can’t remember the last time he’d ever said he wasn’t all right. It had always made him feel weak to admit it, so he never had. But he’s weak now already, and he’s not alright.

Rose nods. “Rey said your powers were gone.”

He nods. “Everything’s gone,” he whispers to her. “Including me.”

Rose opens her mouth to say something but is interrupted by Rey coming out of the trees, looking concerned. “Hey,” she says as she steps towards him.

God he wants to be strong for her. He really wants to be strong for her. He wants to be stronger than he’s ever been for her. Every time he sees her breathe, the light in her eyes, everything rights itself. She’s not the corpse he’d held in his arms on Exegol. And yet—

Her arms are around him. She’s pressing her face into his neck and he’s trying so hard not to cry. He watches Rose retreat and there’s a lump in his throat. He feels guilty— _ guilty _ —because it had felt easier to tell Rose that things weren’t ok than it is to tell Rey. Why is that? 

_ Because what if she leaves you? _

_ What if it’s her and Finn now? Someone more worthwhile because that’s all anyone does? Leave me behind because I’m not good enough? _

“You are good enough,” Rey says fiercely and he hadn’t even noticed her in his mind. He hadn’t. But she’d heard his thoughts loud and clear. Hot shame floods him. “Ben.”

He pulls away, feeling hot and cold. He’d invited her to read his mind when he couldn’t move but now—

“Please don’t do that again,” he whispers and Rey freezes. 

“Sorry,” she tells him. He nods. And for a moment he thinks that’s that, but—

“You saved my life,” she says fiercely. “You saved my life and no one has ever understood me the way you do. What on earth makes you think you’re not good enough? Because things are different? Because you’re trying to find your place in all this?”

“Trying to find my place?” he asks slowly. “I don’t have a place. Not anymore. I’m trying to accept that. But you  _ do _ have a place. This is your story now, your galaxy. And I’m—”

“It’s not  _ my galaxy _ ,” she retorts hotly. “I am not an emperor.”

“You’re a lot more than a scavenger from Jakku.”

“I always have been. You showed me that,” she snaps back at him. “You tried to tell me otherwise, but—”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he mutters looking out through the trees. “It was—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Will he ever be over her ferocity? How intensely she stands up for those she loves. Even—or perhaps especially—when it’s him? No one’s ever stood up for him the way that Rey has. Not a soul. Not his parents, not his—

_ The face of my son. _

Rey’s still talking as he blinks back tears. “—because  _ you _ matter, Ben. I mattered when I was a scavenger with nothing and no training—you  _ definitely _ matter.”

His dad had tried to protect him. He’d tried to remind him that there was always a path. And he’d been too weak and foolish to listen.

But he’ll listen now. He’ll listen to Rey. 

For Dad.

He takes a steadying breath. Then another. Then another. He’s not alone. She’d told him that when he’d told her that. She’s alive. He can do this. 

“You’ll be whatever you want to be, Ben. And no, maybe it won’t be what you wanted before, and that door’s closed to you now, but that doesn’t mean every door is. We’re  _ not _ on Jakku. We’re not—”

“Whatever I want to be,” he whispers. 

He’d never had that choice. Not really. The Jedi had been his mother’s choice; the Knight of Ren had been Snoke’s and Palpatine’s. The only choice he’d ever made in his life was Rey, and she’s telling him he gets to choose for himself now. 

“And one more thing—” she adds. “I’m  _ not _ leaving you for Finn, whatever that thought in your mind was—and I know I won’t do it again, but I still caught it—but—”

“I didn’t think you were going to,” he interrupts.

“You were—”

“Jealous he gets to fight with you is all,” he says. “I liked fighting with you. I liked what we had together.”

Rey kisses jaw. 

“I like what we had together. I like what we have together. I like that we’re together.” and he hears her throat get thick. “Ben, I wanted this for so long. More than I knew I wanted it until I had it. And I know it hurts and—”

“Stop,” he says.

“But you’re hurting.”

“Yeah, but I’m working on it.” 

She looks up at him, appraisingly.  _ Trust me,  _ he thinks. No one ever believed him, but Rey always had. 

And there it is, the recognition in her eyes. She nods. 

“It’ll be good, whatever it is,” he tells her. “It’ll just…”

“Take time.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to help me train Finn? If it’s too much, you really don’t have to. There’s just a lot you know that I don’t yet, and that’s not in the texts I stole.”

He thinks. “Yeah,” he says. “I want to help. So long as it’s not the only thing I’m doing.”

She nods. “As much or as little as you want,” she promises. “And if it hurts, you don’t have to. We’ll be fine.”

He snorts. “I am good at handling pain by now.”

But Rey just shakes her head. “No, you’re not. You’re terrible at it.”

And he bursts out laughing, which surprises him so much that he stops almost immediately.

When had he last laughed? Had he ever laughed?

Rey bites her smile back as she looks up at him and he gives up and bends his head to kiss her. Everything’s a riot of feelings and he’s exhausted but she’s here trying to make him feel better and actually making him laugh. The rest will take time. He’s always been bad at patience but he can try and be patient for Rey.

He can try and be patient for himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Ben stares long and hard at the rocks in front of him. He doesn’t try to lift them. He’ll have less success than Finn had had, he knows. Twice today, without thinking, he’d held out a hand, expecting his blaster, his lightsaber, his something to come zooming into his hand. That had hurt more than this—the unthinking muscle memory of reaching for something he’s too lazy to stand and get and not having it come to his hand at his bidding. 

The sun is setting through the trees. Rose is showing Rey how to cook some of the meat she found in the woods, using spices and nuts for flavoring. “You’ve really never eaten anything that wasn’t dehydrated?” he hears Rose ask. 

“I mean I have, I just don’t know how to cook it myself.”

_ You’ve really never moved rocks before? _

_ I mean I have, just not without the Force. _

This is a bad idea which is why he does it. He’s Ben Solo—the only thing he can really say about himself is that he always acts on bad ideas. So he approaches one of the rocks at the base of where Maz’s place once stood and bends down.  _ Lift from your back, kid.  _

He shoves it, pushes as hard as he can, his muscles straining, his heart pounding in his chest. He pushes, and pushes and it hadn’t been this hard, learning how to use the Force, had it? That had felt intuitive, natural. This feels exactly like what he’d imagine trying to make a boulder move with his own two hands would feel like and it’s not kriffing working. 

“Come on,” he mutters and to his complete and utter surprise it moves. An inch or two, but it moves. And then it moves a lot. It seems to have been stuck on a root or a rock or something because he’s pushing it, rolling it away from the others. It’s not easy, but it’s doable and by the time he’s gotten a good five feet, he stops and stands, breathing hard. Not even a week ago, he’d slaughtered Vader cultists while barely breaking a sweat. Now he can move a big rock. Kind of. With his hands. 

He glances over to the fire. Rey and Finn are still cooking, but from the way their bodies are angled he can tell they’d both been watching him. Especially because Rose comes over. “I couldn’t have done that,” she shrugs.

He resists rolling his eyes. She’s trying to be nice. They’re all trying to be nice about how kriffing useless he is now. He imagines Rey taking his hand and defending him from that thought. 

“Good to know I can still do some things, I guess,” he mutters at last.

“I bet there’s a lot you can do,” Rose points out. “You just never had to think about it before.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s the same thing Rey said earlier.”

“We’re not going to let you forget it.” Rose’s hands are on her hips. “Because if you’re useless, I’m useless, and I’m definitely not useless.”

It’s oddly heartening. This girl is short and definitely not a fighter, but she’s wearing commander signifiers on her Resistance uniform. No—she’s definitely not useless. Even if he has no idea what she actually does. 

“They send you over here to talk sense into me?” he asks.

“No, I came on my own,” she says. “Something tells me you’ve never had an equal before, what with all that powerful Force stuff.”

“Rey was,” he says quietly.  _ We were a dyad.  _ He glances at her and catches her watching him. She smiles, caught and not too cowardly to pretend she hadn’t been. 

“Well, you got a whole lot of equals now,” Rose says firmly. “And you’re probably still smarter, and faster, and better trained than most of them. I can’t move that rock,” she nods to it. 

“No,” he says. “Want to work towards it?” 

Rose laughs. “Not a chance. But I was thinking—camping’s all well and good, but it might be good to try and rebuild this. Make it stand. A home, or a shelter or something. And I’m the one with the engineering background, so I figured now’d be a good time to see if I can put that to a different kind of use.”

Ben looks at the stones. Rey and—when he’s trained—Finn will be able to move the rocks. They won’t need him to do it. He feels his shoulders sag even as Rose asks, “Want to help with the plans? You probably had to look at ship specs, right?”

And his eyes snap to hers. It felt like a lifetime ago, looking at the blueprints for first his Silencer and then his Whisper.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I did.”

“Finn won’t know what he’s looking at and Rey’s good at fixing stuff, but not at plans. Trust me. Want to help me out?”

“Yeah,” he hears himself say. His mind is already whirring. He knew what Maz’s place looked like, had run around it as a kid, had sensed his way into secret tunnels and hidden doorways. He knew what it had been—which didn’t mean it had to be that now, but it was definitely a starting off point. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Dinner’s ready!” Rey calls, and Rose gives him a smile. 

“Look, I’m not saying it’s an us versus them,” she tells him quietly as they go to the firepit. “But I am saying I’m sort of glad to have company. While they’re doing their Force things.”

A lump lodges in Ben’s throat.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Me too.” Then he frowns. “Why don’t you hate me?”

“Finn was First Order. I don’t hate him, do I?”

“Yeah, but I was—”

“Rey says you saved her life, and saved all our lives. Sometimes I need to believe that people can change and grow and learn. Hatred is exhausting. I’d rather forgive and move on. I’ll save my hatred for people who don’t have hearts. And you seem to have one.”

“Seems to have what?” Finn asks as they settle by the firepit.

“A heart,” Rose tells him, and Finn looks at him.

If he hadn’t talked to Rose on the trip here, he really hasn't talked to Finn. He toyed with him in the snows on Starkiller, would have happily killed him. And he’s sure Finn knows that.

“Yeah,” Finn says shrugging. “Seems possible.”

“Finn,” Rey intones, a slight biting growl and Ben could pull her into his arms, kiss her, hold her so close. He doesn’t though. Instead, he just watches Finn, and Finn’s gaze is leveled on him. He keeps staring at Finn, waiting for him to look away, knowing that Finn’s doing the same to him.  _ Joke’s on you—I’ve been staring at someone who hates me for years.  _ His uncle, Snoke, Palpatine, himself—Finn doesn’t stand a chance.

And sure enough, Finn sighs and breaks. “He didn’t kill me or report me, did he?”

And Ben remembers. Taunul. It feels like a lifetime ago.

“Maybe you didn’t register.”

“Maybe  _ you _ don’t register,” Finn grumbles.

“Let’s just not,” Rey says, her jaw tight.

He doesn’t know why he says it. Maybe because he hadn’t let himself think it on Jakku as he’d watched FN-2187 lower his blaster. “Death is hard. Slaughter is harder unless you make yourself stop seeing them as people. You kept seeing them as people. Because you’re a person too.”

And he stabs his knife into his meat. It’s tough, overcooked, but Rey made it so he’s going to eat every bite. 

“You cut down that old man.”

“Lor San Tekka,” he says, chewing the meat. It’s  _ really _ tough but he’ll die telling Rey it’s delicious. “Just because you see people as people doesn’t mean you don’t want to kill them.”

“Like your dad.”

“ _ Finn _ ,” Rey says again but Ben gives her a look and shakes his head slightly. 

“Better to get it out in the open, right?” he asks her quietly. “Besides,” and he turns back to Finn, “You’re not saying anything I haven’t thought of myself. Do your worst. I dare you.”

Another thing that doesn’t require the Force, he supposes. His own experience with self-loathing. That hadn’t gone away—not at all. He feels almost manic this time as he stares Finn down. “I wanted to let old things die, even after I killed Snoke. I wanted the Resistance Fleet destroyed. I meant to cut all of you down on Crait. I tried to kill my uncle before he bested me, and I did kill my father. You’re not going to say anything I’m not already aware of—more acutely than you.”

Which is how Finn catches him off-guard. 

“Yeah, exactly. You would brush them off if you didn’t have a heart. I served under Phasma, I know how it’s done. You’re carrying them on your shoulders though. Because you feel guilty. So you have a heart. And I’m done with First Order lackeys telling me what to do or think.”

Ben stares at him. For a long time. Then he looks away, down at his food. His eyes are stinging. 

He takes another bite of dinner.

It really does taste delicious.

-

They don’t let the fire die. Chewie goes to bed first, followed by Finn and Rose. Ben sits up with Rey for a long while. He’s been pretty quiet all evening, eating every scrap of food on his plate. It warms her heart. Rey thinks she and Finn did a good job cooking, but Chewie’s reaction made it clear to her that there was room for improvement. But Ben had a second plate. 

“You ok?” Ben asks her and Rey blinks at him.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been quiet.” 

She looks at him and could laugh. “I’m fine”

But instead of looking mollified he frowns. “Yeah, you’re not fine. You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what again?” she asks him.

“Pretending to be fine, putting a smile on it so that—”

“You don’t want me to smile and tell you you’re all right? That all this will be all right? Because it will be, Ben. I’m not going to just act like—”

“I’m going to be fine,” he says and she wonders if now he’s the one who is lying to himself. She’d watched him roll that boulder, watched his shoulders sag when he’d talked to Rose, watched him go quiet over dinner, and the day before she had followed him into the woods when watching her train Finn had been too much. “It’ll be hard, but I’ve faced harder. No—you’re not fine. And not about that.”

“Tell me how I’m feeling,” she snaps at him, more than a little annoyed. “Since you know me so damn well.”

“No,” he replies. “I’m not going to tell you how you’re feeling, or how to feel. I’m just going to point out what you’re  _ not _ feeling, and you’re not feeling ok.”

“How is that different from you telling me what I’m feeling?” she demands. 

“Because I don’t know what you’re feeling,” he says. “I literally can’t sense it anymore. So if you want me to know, then you have to tell me.”

“And what if I don’t want you to know?” she asks, the words slipping out of her mouth in anger before she can stop them. “No—I didn’t mean that. Ben—”

But he’s already getting to his feet with a sigh and walking towards the lake and Rey trails after him, horrified. “I didn’t mean that,” she repeats. “You know I didn’t. Ben—”

“I know you didn’t,” he sighs. “But you also don’t want to talk right now, so I’m going to—”

“Please,” she grabs his hand and he freezes, turning slowly to her. There are tears in her eyes.  _ Please don’t leave me behind right now. _

And his arms are around her and she’s sobbing into his dark shirt and he’s holding her the way she’d always wanted to be held, by someone who loves her, who cares about her. She’d wanted that for so long—had believed her family loved her, had needed to believe it.

“They just left me.” 

“I know.”

“And I don’t think they were brave. I think they were cowards.”

“They were,” he says. Such a different tune from his star destroyer. It’s like he read her mind when he continued, “They were cowards. They thought they were brave. They thought they were doing the right thing.”

“Why did you say—”

“I shouldn’t have,” he says. 

“But you still—”

“Because if your parents were brave for giving you away to hide you from Palpatine, then mine were too. And mine were cowards.”

Rey inhales sharply.

“They wanted to help you.”

“So did yours,” he replied darkly. “And yet here I am with all of them dead and it wasn’t until I was a fully grown adult that any of them actually succeeded in helping me. My dad—” and he cut himself off, breathing hard. “I needed to believe they were brave. It helped me be brave, I guess. Maybe. Or it helped me hate them. I don’t know. But they were cowards. They failed me but at least my parents didn’t stop trying. Dad got me in the end.”

“Mine wouldn’t have. They were killed.”

Ben nods. She shudders against his chest. “I would have preferred junk traders to this.”

“I know,” he whispers, a hand coming up and resting just at the top of her neck, cradling her head. “I know.”

“They were trying to be brave,” she says. “That didn’t make it hurt less. There has to have been something else they could have done.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees. “But that’s not a road worth traveling.” She looks up at him, and he grimaces, but his eyes get a little bit distant. “My mother  _ should _ have told me about Vader, but didn’t. My uncle  _ shouldn’t _ have looked into my head but did. My dad  _ could _ have visited me more. Your parents did leave you behind. What they  _ could _ have done doesn’t change who you are or what you’ve come to be. And what you  _ choose _ to be has nothing to do with them. That’s you.”

She swallows. 

They stand like that for a while. Ben just holds her, and her hands rest on his hips, her eyes closed. The wind rustles in the trees, the water laps at the shore. “I wasn’t letting myself think about it.”

“You do that,” he points out.

“Shut up.”

“Never.”

She looks up at him. “Thanks for asking.”

He gives her a wry smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Easier to focus on you than myself,” he says at last. “I imagine you know the feeling.”

She tries to smile too. 

“I hope it’ll hurt less soon,” she whispers.

“I think it will.” A pause, a breath. “I need to believe it will.”

“Me too.”

She pulls him towards the  _ Falcon _ and the bed in the captain’s quarters again and it’s not long before she’s asleep, tucked under his chin.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think i have a goal for the ending chapter count now! hopefully it'll be done before too long!

The days seem slower. 

_ They’re not,  _ Chewie tells her when she voices this thought to him.  _ Takodana has shorter days than Arjan Kloss. And Jakku. _

She doesn’t question it. Chewie just knows all sorts of things. Sure, he’s no Threepio, constantly assessing and reassessing odds, but he’s older than Rey ever will be. He’s lived and lost and she glances at him.

_ What? _ the Wookiee asks. They’re sitting by the lake. Finn’s resting, exhausted, and Rey should be meditating, or something, but instead she’s got her feet in the water, enjoying the cool softness of wetness.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Rey asks.

Chewie gives her a long, steady look.  _ No,  _ he says.  _ I’m going to make him talk to me. _

Rey can’t even argue with that as they both look over towards the wreckage that had once been Maz’s home. Ben’s over there, straining every muscle in his body while Rose measures the ones he’s already moved. He’s sweating in the sunlight, and Rey’s sure that tonight, like last night, and the night before, he’ll pass out in less than five minutes, exhausted from pushing the limitations of what had once been easy for him.

“They could probably use your help,” Rey points out.

_ They probably could,  _ Chewie agrees mildly, lifting his arms and resting his hands behind his head. Rey smiles at him. He smiles back, then ruffles her hair with his hand.  _ Maz’d be glad he’s rebuilding it,  _ he allows after a moment.  _ She always used to say that the Force moved in mysterious ways and such. _

“You’re talking about her like she’s dead,” Rey points out and Chewie’s eyes flicker just a bit. He looks back at Ben then gets to his feet. He walks over towards where Ben’s moving rocks. Ben glances at him and Chewie ignores him and it takes Rey a moment before she realizes.  _ He’s thinking about Leia. And Han. _

Maz is alive. And Chewie has lost the others too.

She gets to her feet, tugging her socks and boots on so that her feet don’t get too muddy. Then she goes over to where the others are working. 

“No,” Ben says as she approaches and she freezes. “No, no lifting rocks here. You can watch but we’re doing this by hand.”

His jaw is jutting and Chewie lifts his head to watch Rey. She gets it—she does.  _ If this is how I can be helpful, I suppose… _ she says, and she sits down on one of the rocks near Rose.

“Why are you measuring them?” she asks.

“To make sure the thing has structural integrity,” Rose replies. “And it’d be good if we could figure out how to make a good paste mortar. But we’ll save that for later when they’re all organized.”

“Organized?” Rey asks.

“I’m making him organize them by size.”

“Do you want help with organizing at least?” Rey asks Ben. It’d go faster.

“No,” Ben grunts, the muscles in his neck straining, the muscles in his arms straining. Sweat is beading and dripping down his face as he rolls the next giant rock towards Rose. Behind him, Rey notes, Chewie is moving smaller ones. 

When he’s finished rolling his most recent rock, Ben pauses, taking a few slow breaths. Then in a fluid motion, he tugs his shirt up over his head and uses it to rub the sweat from his face before tossing it aside and Rey—

Well, she’s seen him shirtless before.  _ Why did you kill your father? _ So she shouldn’t be surprised at this. But this is different. In just about every way.

For one thing, he’s right there, feet from her in person. For another, she’s not grappling with what he means to her, and her own fear that she herself is meaningless. And lastly his pants are sitting lower on his hips and the muscles of his abdomen ripple in the sunlight, gleaming with sweat, and she has to look away, swallowing, feeling suddenly and unexpectedly warm.

_ You sleep curled up next to him every night,  _ she tells herself firmly.  _ You kiss him. You hold him in your arms. _

And it is clear to her in that one moment just how chaste they’ve been with one another—as though they still can’t believe the other is alive, that the other is there with them after over a year of dreaming, of regretting.

She looks back at him. His back is to her now and  _ stars _ those muscles too. She’d never thought about back muscles, but they’re bulging as he throws himself into the next bit of work. 

_ Don’t push from your back,  _ Chewie tells him and Ben glances up.  _ You’re going to hurt yourself. Han always did his back in like that. _

“It’s pushing, not lifting,” Ben says quietly.

_ Bend down a little more. Rely more on the leverage of your spine, not the power of your muscles. Your bones can put up with a lot more. _

Ben swallows and adjusts his position and returns to his activity. Chewie catches Rey watching them. He tilts his head as if to say  _ shut up _ before going back to work himself.

And Rey feels a spot of hope blooming in her chest. 

-

Rey’s been acting funny.

She’s trying to be subtle about whatever it is, but—well, it’s not that she can’t fool him, because she probably could. But that whatever it is that’s making her act funny is catching her off guard enough that she doesn’t seem able to.

He notices it at first when they go to sleep. For the past few nights, she has curled up under his chin without thinking, or making a fuss. And sure, he’s passed out fast—a novelty since the voices—Palpatine—in his head are gone—so maybe her fussing had come after he’d been asleep, but she keeps fidgeting. And pulling away from him.

_ As though she doesn’t want you. _

_ Shut up,  _ he growls at that voice. It sounds—well, it sounds like every demon he’s freed himself from. It sounds like Snoke, and Palpatine, and his uncle Luke. It sounds like a monster, like Vader. And if there’s one thing he’s decided for himself, it’s that he’s not going to listen to monsters anymore. Just Rey. Rey and his own beating heart which is telling him that’s not it.

But it makes it hard to sleep. He wants to pull her into his arms, but when he tries, she fidgets away. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks on the third day.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says a little breathily, heat creeping up to her cheeks. She’s lying again, but this time to him, not to herself. And that hurts worse somehow.

So he rolls onto his other side and tries to sleep with his back to her—which he hates worse than her fidgeting just outside of the reach of his arms.

The whole next day, he feels angry, hurt, powerless. He watches as Finn and Rey continue to spar, watches as Finn begins to stand taller now that he’s starting to really feel a little bit of  _ control _ of his power that flows through him. He watches as Rey purposefully doesn’t watch him, the way she angles her body away from him so she doesn’t have to see him, so she doesn’t have to think about him—just the newer, nicer force user. The one she can actually connect with about her powers because his are gone.

_ This isn’t right,  _ he tells himself, but the wave of his anger has always been overwhelmingly powerful. Logic drowns beneath it. It always has.  _ Feel your power. Feel the power of the dark side. _

But he’s got nothing.  _ Nothing _ . If he were to punch this rock, he’d break his hand rather than shatter the stone. 

_ Why won’t she look at me? _

_ She hates you _ — _ hates being trapped here with you, being stuck here with you. She thought it would be more fun than it is. She thought she wouldn’t have to carry the burdens of the world alone on her shoulders. _

“You keep going easy on me,” he hears Finn say when he and Rey pause.

“It’s not because I don’t think you can take it,” Rey says at once.

“Yeah, because I could.”

“I’m trying to—”

“You’re supposed to push me. I can’t grow if you don’t push me.”

Ben wishes he were deaf. And blind. And alone. He wonders what they’d do if he just waded into the water and never came back. Why does he always have to hurt so much?

It feels almost like he’s operating outside of his body when he walks over to them and hears himself say, “Try me, then.”

“Ben?” Rey asks slowly. She’s looking at him—finally. 

“I won’t go easy on you,” he shrugs. “May not be what I was but I bet all my training could still beat all of yours.”

“Ben,” Rey intones again but Finn’s already saying, 

“Yeah. Fine. Let’s dance.”

And Ben nods, and squares his shoulders and holds out a hand for Rey’s quarterstaff.

Her jaw is tight when she hands it to him and he sees worry in her eyes. For him or for Finn?

_ Stoke the darkness. Even if the power’s not there anymore. _

It feels good to fight, to attack, to defend, his body moving out of memory against someone who definitely doesn’t have his discipline or control. Strange to think about that—that he has more control than someone else. But he supposes fighting was the one area where he’d always been okay at controlling himself. Except when he’s doing dumb impulsive things like right now.

He catches every single one of Finn’s attempts to strike him. He strikes high, and Ben catches the blow easily with Rey’s staff. He catches the low one that follows it. He bears down on Finn the way he had on Starkiller, and with every step he takes, he feels more centered. That’s been fighting for him—all his life. When he fights, he’s in control. When he fights, his muscles know what to do. Even right now when they feel like they’re moving more slowly than usual. His reactions aren’t what they were, but they are enough and his body knows what Finn’s going to throw at him by virtue of years of training, not that split-second intuition that comes before Finn even knows what he’s going to be doing. 

_ Non-Force users fought the Jedi all the time,  _ he thinks as he catches another one of Finn’s blows and throws the other man back.  _ The Mandalorian Wars were proof that it could be done.  _ A thought he’ll keep for later. Later, when Rey won’t look at him and he’s feeling powerless again. He can still fight.

He disarms Finn, sending the other’s staff flying towards the trees with a single sweeping motion of his own. And he can’t help it—he glances at Rey and her eyes are doing something bright, something burning as she watches him. Her jaw isn’t tight, it’s like she’s leaning towards him, not away from him. Her hands are limp at her sides and he feels his lips twist into a smile.

_ You see? It was probably all in your head, just like it always _ —

And something hits him hard in the eye, knocking him back, and it is the last thing he remembers before his head hits the ground with a sharp crack.

-

“Finn!” Rey yells, pelting towards Ben and falling to her knees next to him, her fingers scrabbling over his chest to find his heartbeat.  _ He almost died. He almost _ —

But there it is. Still pulsing. He’d just hit his head. And Finn—

“What, we were still going,” Finn complains.

“He didn’t think so,” she shoots back, gently running her hands through his hair. There’s no blood. The skin hadn’t opened when he’d hit the ground. But there was a rock underneath.  _ If he hurt his brain… _

“Well that was dumb of him. He used to  _ lead _ First Order training sessions. You don’t stop until your opponent—”

But Rey isn’t listening. She’s bending over him, closing her eyes, feeling the Force flow through her, the way she had on Kef Bir. She’d knit together his guts and skin and muscle. She’d healed that scar on his face, the one she’d given him on Starkiller the first time they’d really fought. She lets the Force flow through his body but—

She opens her eyes, blinking back tears. Why isn’t it working?

“What’s wrong?” Finn asks her, seeing her face.

“I healed him,” she says. “Once before. I healed him. But it’s not working.”

“Maybe you’re not in the right frame of mind.”

“ _ You’re _ not in the right frame of mind,” she mutters. She can’t take her eyes off Ben. There’s some color on his cheekbone right where Finn had punched him. That’ll bruise. Why can’t she heal him? Why isn’t—

She looks over at the boulders and rocks he’d been organizing before he’d come over. She extends a hand and lifts them all, exactly as she’d expect to, the way she’d done on Crait. So why can’t she do this? This is infinitely easier than what she’d done before. This is just some bruising over his eye, and maybe a slight head injury. Hopefully a slight head injury.

“Ben,” she whispers, poking him gently in the side. “Ben.”

His eyelids flutter and open. Almost at once, his face relaxes into a smile. “Hi,” he whispers.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” she asks.

“Two,” he says, his eyes darting between each of them. Then he frowns. “What—”

Then he sits up sharply, glaring at Finn. “Fine,” he growls and he gets to his feet.

“Ben, you hit your head, you shouldn’t—”

But he’s already storming off back towards the rocks. “Ben,” she shouts and hurries after him, grabbing his hand, and a shock runs right up her arm as he turns to look at her, frustration in every line of his face.

“Shouldn’t what?” he asks, his voice low and still very angry.

Rey blinks at him. She hadn’t remembered what she was going to say. Her whole body feels hot and the way he’d looked while fighting Finn, the way he’d looked when he’d taken off his shirt, the way he’s looking at her now with fire in his eyes... Her mouth is dry.

He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Never mind,” he says.

“You shouldn’t do anything strenuous,” she says belatedly. “You just hit your head.”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Ben mutters.

“What’s gotten into you today?” she asks him.

“What’s gotten into  _ you _ ?” he shoots back at her. “You won’t even look at me.”

Rey gapes at him. She doesn’t even know how to respond to that. Won’t even look at him? As if the sight of him shirtless hadn’t been burned into her brain. Even when she’s  _ not _ looking at him, she’s looking at him.

“Yeah, never mind,” he snaps and this time he marches towards the  _ Falcon _ . 

And like  _ hell _ is Rey going to leave it like that. She follows him. “What on earth do you mean, I won’t even look at you?”

He rounds on her again right at the gangplank of the  _ Falcon _ . “You won’t look at me, you keep pulling away from me. I get it, ok? I’m—I’m what I always am. Too much for you, too much for—”

“What on earth are you—” but he’s trembling and it’s like he can’t see her, the way he’s looking at her now and Rey hears herself say, “How is it that you’re so good at talking to me about my problems but so bad at handling your own?”

“I dunno,” he practically shouts. “You’re pretty much the same though.”

And he storms into the  _ Falcon,  _ and this time, Rey doesn’t follow him. She stands there, rooted to the spot, completely perplexed, and it’s Chewie’s hand on her shoulder that makes her start back to reality.

_ You shouldn’t let him stew,  _ Chewie says.

“No,” she sighs. 

_ He usually stews to a worse place. It’s always been like that. _

“Keep saying things like that and I’ll start to think you care,” Rey tells him.

_ I can care without forgiving. In fact, I will care without forgiving. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. When you’re my age you’ll understand. _

“Sure, old man,” she says, attempting to smile. There’s a lump in her throat. What on  _ earth  _ had set him off. He’d been disconsolate sometimes, he’d been frustrated, but never so angry that he seemed to completely lose control. And even before all this had happened, she had never seen this kind of anger directed at her.

She finds him lying in the captain’s bunk, his face to the wall. She climbs onto it and pulls him into her arms, tucking her legs underneath his so that she’s as flush to him as she can be. “What’s wrong?” she asks him.

“You tell me,” he mumbles. His voice is different now. Softer, sadder, wetter. He’s been trying not to cry—and failing, probably.

She presses a kiss to the back of his neck. 

“You haven’t been looking at me,” he says. “You keep pulling away from me. And I just…” he swallows. He swallows again. 

She kisses his neck again, heat rising up her neck to her cheeks. She has been pulling away from him—yes. “Not because I don’t want you, Ben,” she whispers. 

“So you admit—”

“Because—”

He stops and so does she. “You go,” he says after a moment, sounding nervous.

“It’s not because I don’t want you, Ben,” she repeats. Oh god. She’s really going to have to say this out loud, isn’t she? It sounds so crass saying it out loud, and it’s not like she cares about social graces but this isn’t social graces. This is telling Ben—“Because you get me… I…” her cheeks are on fire. On  _ fire _ . 

She can’t bring herself to say it.  _ Coward. It’s not like he won’t want you back. He literally brought you back from the dead. _

_ But what if he wanted… I don’t know. What if it wasn’t like that? _

_ Like a sister? Who kisses their sister with tongue? _

“Yeah,” Ben says and his voice sounds almost dead now. “Yeah.” And he tries to pull away from her, to roll onto his stomach and press his face into the pillow and Rey grabs him and tugs him back towards her.

“Let me fucking say it, will you?” she asks him angrily. 

“What is there to say?” he asks and his voice still sounds so dead, so hurt, so unwanted.

“That I can’t look at you without wanting to jump your damn bones,” Rey practically shouts. She hears Ben’s breath catch in his throat. “That I keep pulling away from you because if I don’t all I can think about is—” but she won’t say that. She can’t say that. But she pulls him towards her and kisses him on the mouth this time, her tongue sliding between his lips. For a moment—a horrible, gut-sinking moment, Ben doesn’t respond to his kiss. 

Then his arms are around her and he’s pulling her closer to him, his tongue rubbing against hers, his breath hot in her mouth and it’s like he’s breathing life into her again. Her heart is hammering in her chest, her skin is crackling with every movement of his hands, of the fabric that covers it. 

His kissing slows, though his arms tighten around her. He gives her a peck before pulling away, his eyes closed, breathing hard. “My head’s throbbing because of how fast my heart’s going,” he mutters. 

“I tried healing it,” Rey tells him, brushing her fingers through his hair again, trying to find the bruising. “It wouldn’t work.”

He frowns slightly. “Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“You can still do the other things though, right?”

“Yeah.”

Then he shrugs. “Strange.”

Then he opens his eyes again and when he looks up at her they’re soft and—oddly—it makes her heart lurch far more than when he’d looked at her with fire.

“You should have told me you were feeling like I didn’t want you,” she whispers.

“You should have told me you wanted to jump my bones.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t having a complete meltdown about it and getting into a fight with Finn.”

“It wasn’t a complete meltdown,” Ben protests.

“It was,” she says. “You really are much better at helping me than you are at taking care of yourself, aren’t you.” It’s not a question. It’s the truth. And when he looks up at her it’s like he’s been caught this time. 

He swallows.

“I’ll try,” he says at last.

“Don’t try, do it,” she says firmly. “I’ll help you where I can but this—”

“I should have talked to you sooner,” he says glumly.

“Yes, but you also got yourself angry like that all on your own. I can help you when I know what’s going on, but you also need to take care of yourself too. Or else Finn’s gonna punch you in the face.”

He snorts and buries his face in her neck. “I think I’ll be able to,” he whispers. “Everything’s a lot right now.”

“Yeah,” Rey agrees, because it is. She gets that. She gets that a lot. “I’m here, though,” she tells him. “And you’re here. And we’ll get better at this.”

“Yeah, just because the Force isn’t connecting us at random anymore doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you,” he says wryly. “Just because it’s not there doesn’t mean I don’t want…” he lets his voice trail away and Rey knows  _ exactly  _ what he wants.

Her mouth goes dry.

_ What would have happened if his head weren’t hurting? _

And she knows the answer to that and her stomach tightens in anticipation.

-

It’s ridiculous is what it is, lying there with his arms wrapped around her, with her sprawled across his chest the way she is. It’s ridiculous, and he needs to be better at getting a grip, just like Rey says and—

And he bites back a groan.

_ Get a grip,  _ was perhaps not the phrasing he should use because his heart lurches and his dick twitches, barely inches from her and his head throbs particularly annoyingly.

She wants him. She  _ wants him  _ wants him. Like that. Like he’d stopped thinking anyone should want him years ago, because Jedi aren’t supposed to have attachments, and then he’d stopped thinking anyone  _ could _ want him because who could ever learn to love a beast?

_ I’m not a beast though. I’m a man. _

A man with a woman in his arms who is nothing special at all anymore, but somehow that only makes it better.


	5. Chapter 5

_ You sorted it out then?  _

Ben almost jumps out of his skin. Chewie’s gaze is level, not quite detached but not  _ not _ detached either. 

“Yes,” he says slowly. It is strange, Chewie checking in on him. The last time he’d seen Chewie, Chewie had been firing his bowcaster at him and he wonders if either of them would have regretted if the shot had hit him higher, a little more centered—if it had killed him. 

_ Good.  _ Then, after a pause,  _ Don’t look at me like that. She deserves more than you messing her around. _

“I wasn’t messing her around,” Ben tells him. His head throbs slightly. He wants that to stop. And soon. Because the sooner it stops the sooner they can—

She’d slept tucked under his chin the night before. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all. She’d been there, warm and alive in his arms and all he’d wanted was to keep kissing her until neither of them could breathe.

_ Your dad spent too much of his time messing Leia around and your mom didn’t deserve it and Rey doesn’t deserve it.  _ Chewie is on a tirade and Ben just blinks at him.

“Are you telling me not to be my dad?”

No one’s ever told him not to be his dad. Except his mom, but she never really meant that. 

_ In this,  _ Chewie clarifies, eyes narrowing.  _ Make no mistake: I’m far more protective of her well-being than I am over yours. _

“That much we have in common,” Ben says dryly. Dryly, and yet it’s the truth. He’d have sooner died than lost her. His whole life—whatever future he’d imagined for himself…

But he doesn’t have to go over that anymore. Chewie’s aware of it. The fact that Chewie seems to be in any way invested in talking to him is already more than he’d ever expected. Wookiees have long memories.

_ He’ll be dead before he forgives me,  _ Ben thinks.

_ Don’t think about it too hard, kid,  _ his father’s voice whispers in the corner of his mind.  _ Let the past die. He’s talking to you. That’s what counts. _

-

It’s gone from bad to worse. Bad was being haunted by his chest, his abdomen, his arms, his back. Now she feels as though she’s counting the breaths until he feels better. Because when he feels better—

Her stomach lurches every single time. Every single time. 

“You and Rose haven’t…” she asks Finn.

“Haven’t what?” he asks before he gives her a grin. “Yeah. I mean—we’ve been together for a while now.”

“Right,” Rey says quickly, looking away. This was the dumbest thing she could have asked him. She  _ knows _ that Finn and Rose have had sex. And how she’s just gone and—

“Was that what that was yesterday?” Finn asks, grinning. “Pent up… aggression, shall we say?”

“Shut up,” she mutters. She wishes her cheeks were marginally less red. 

“Sorry I knocked your boyfriend out,” Finn guffaws. “I’m sure he’ll heal soon.”

“I tried healing him yesterday and it wouldn’t work,” Rey tells him.

“Through the Force?” Finn asks. “Like with that serpent on Pasana?”

She nods. “I did it once before. When we were fighting on Kef Bir. I stabbed him right through the gut but healed him after. But I couldn’t heal him yesterday.” She looks at Finn. “I have no idea why.”

“Maybe you only get a set number of times you can do it before you have to stop for a while?” he asks. 

“Maybe,” Rey says slowly. It had been hard, and complicated—healing Ben. But it had felt no harder than grabbing that transport out of the sky, or sending lightning out of the tips of her fingers. More energy exerted in focus, but no more power leveraged. “I was wondering if—if because he and I had a connection before, but now his Force sensitivity is gone, it did something.”

“Made you weaker?” Finn asks. “Nah. I can’t fathom that. Maybe it just needed a vacation. You’ve been doing a lot of Force things lately.”

“That’s not how the Force works,” Rey says, rolling her eyes.

“How do you know? You know all the secrets of the Force now?” Finn demands. “You’re not some all-powerful entity. You probably have limits that you pushed and need to rest. So rest a bit. You’ll be able to have fun in a few days.”

Rey swallows.

“You’re not a machine,” Finn repeats firmly. “It’ll be back.”

“I don’t feel like anything else is gone though,” Rey says.

“And the Force moves in mysterious ways. Or so I’ve been told,” Finn says, rolling his eyes. “You’re not less than what you were because he doesn’t have the Force anymore, if that’s what you think. He didn’t make you powerful. You did.”

Rey takes a deep breath and looks at him. “I thought I was supposed to be training you,” she points out.

“Yeah, because you’ve got a monopoly on all life experiences in the galaxy,” Finn says, rolling his eyes. “I’ll catch you up on them, don’t worry. Plenty of wisdom to go around.” He gets to his feet. “Next round?”

-

Where several days before, he’d been convinced that Rey didn’t want to look at him, couldn’t bring herself to care about him, he’s acutely aware of her gaze the moment he starts shifting rocks again. He can feel her eyes burning into the back of his head as he begins rolling, as he stands next to Rose to discuss plans, and what should go where, and when, and how.

He can practically feel her tracing his body with the Force, testing that spot on his head that had, until a little while ago, throbbed unpleasantly every time he’d moved. He glances her way once or twice, and each time, she locks eyes with him, her gaze nothing short of fire, and he watches her lick her lips.

Which is why he decides the only thing he can do is take off his shirt. It’s hot, after all, and he’s sweating a fair amount, and he’s known for longer than they’ve loved one another that she’s liked his chest.

He smirks slightly as he turns back to the boulders.  _ Don’t overdo it now,  _ he warns himself as he and Chewie begin to work on relining the foundation.  _ The last thing you want right now is to do something dumb and end up hurt again. _

Although honestly, so long as it’s not his head, he doesn’t think any minor injury would necessarily stop them.

He’s sure Rey wouldn’t find the argument compelling.

He stretches a few times, brushes his hair back from his face.

_ Stop showing off,  _ Chewie grumbles at him.

“No,” Ben replies. “You’re the one who wants her happy, right.”

_ Yeah, but you can keep it in your pants until I’ve gone to bed, can’t you? _

“Technically, it is in my pants.”

Chewie ignores him for the rest of the afternoon. 

He’s tempted to put his shirt on over dinner, but Rey gives him a  _ don’t you dare _ look which makes him grin. It’s stinky and sweaty anyway. And the breeze is cool across the lake now that the sun is setting. 

He couldn’t have told anyone what they had for dinner. There was meat involved—he thinks. Some spices. It filled him up, and Finn and Rose made excuses to disappear and Chewie left him and Rey with the cleanup, claiming that  _ he didn’t deserve this _ or something, which only made him and Rey grin at one another.

“How are you feeling?” Rey asks him.

“A little tired,” he shrugs. “Busy day after all that resting.”

“Do you need to lie down?”

“Only if you come with me.”

It’s like someone else has invaded his body. Never in his life has he ever managed to say something that successfully flirtatious, although he supposes he’d never really tried. He’d never had anyone to try  _ with _ before Rey. 

Rey, whose hand is in his, who is putting everything away with the Force with a flick of her fingers and dragging him off towards the  _ Falcon _ , who is pulling him into her arms the moment they’re up the gangplank and standing on the tips of her toes so that she’s sort of toppling him against the wall behind him, her chest pressed to his.

She’s the only thing he’s aware of, which is probably why there’s so much stumbling and banging as they make their way to the captain’s bunk. They fumble at one another’s clothes and Ben is glad that his shirt is already off when they have to break their kiss for Rey to tug off her top because it means he can watch the way her breasts bounce down as they are freed from their fabric—soft and perfect. It means that he can pause before pulling her in for a kiss again and just look at her.

She’s so breathlessly beautiful.

She has been ever since he first saw her, here, on Takodana that first time.

“Like what you see?” She’s trying to be playful, he can see that in her eyes, can hear it in her voice, in the coy smile she’s giving him, her head slightly tilted towards her shoulder. But he’s done being playful. He can’t right now.

He just pulls her into his arms, cups her face in each of his hands and kisses her like she’d kissed him when she’d come back from the dead. He kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her until his lips forget what it feels like not to be connected to hers, until his heart forgets what it feels like not to beat in time with hers—if it ever hasn’t. 

“Be with me,” she whispers to him, and what can he do except consent? 

He cups her breasts, he kisses her clavicle, he jerks his hips towards hers. He is painfully hard in his pants, harder than he’s been in his life, but somehow there’s a sweetness to that, knowing that he’ll know relief, that he’ll know release, and that Rey will be a part of it. No more miserable ministrations with his own hand, thinking he’s undeserving even of his own love. Just Rey. Only Rey. Indomitable, incredible Rey.

And then her hands are down the front of his pants. Both of them, one for the zipper, one to grab him and he almost chokes and loses it the second her hand grabs him. The only reason he doesn’t is that she grabs a little too hard. “Easy,” is all he manages to say and her grip loosens at once. 

“Sorry,” she whispers and she kisses him. “How should I?”

_ Fuck _ if he knows how to answer that question. Because anything she does will be perfect because she’ll be the one doing it. But he manages to say, “A little tighter as you get to the top? And a slight twist? Not too much but—”

“Like that?”

He can’t form words. He’s never known any words at all. The only thing he’s known is him and Rey’s hand pumping up and down his dick, and shit shit shit he’s going to come all over her hand, her tits, her pretty face if he’s not—

He kisses her and grabs her wrist.

“What’s wrong?”

“Too good,” he grunts and Rey’s concern turns into a catlike smile. 

“I’ll take that,” she says and thankfully lets go of him—even if he misses her touch at once. 

Maybe it’s the blood roaring in his ears that makes him bold, impulsive. God knows it feels instinctive as his hands find the ties at the top of her pants and undoes them, as he eases them down her hips and begins to stroke at her cleft. 

“Ohhhhhh,” she lets out a long sigh, her breath uneven against his neck as she keens forward, resting her forehead against his shoulder. 

“Like that?” he asks her. He has no idea what he’s doing—no earthly clue. He knows that locker room talk exists, but he’d never really heard it. He thinks her sighing is a good thing. If he were making that noise, it would be a good thing. 

“There,” she mumbles as he strokes one specific spot and he focuses on it, little circles over and over again. God she’s so wet. She’s dripping, hot and slick, onto his fingers and he wonders what she smells like, tastes like, but he’s not going to take his fingers away to find out when she’s rubbing herself against him the way she is right now. 

“You’re here,” she keeps mumbling into his neck. “You’re here. Ben.”

“I’m here,” he hears himself say as he presses a finger into her and  _ stars _ she’s tight. She’s so tight. He’s never going to be able to fit himself into her. She whimpers and goes still. “Too much?” he asks her.

“No,” she says and he starts moving his hand as she continues. “But more might be.” She looks at him nervously.

He nods. He kisses her. “We can go slow,” he says. “This is a first time. It’s not an only time.”

Her eyelids flutter closed for just a moment and then her lips are on his, her fingers stroking the sides of his face. “As many times as we want,” she whispers. “Until we’re bored with one another.”

“I’ll never be bored with you,” he promises and he pumps his finger in and out of her and with his other hand, finds that spot she’d liked. She groans into his lips. 

“Ben.” He’ll never be over the sound of his name on her lips. He’ll never be over the way she wants him, the way she’s keening towards him, the way they’ve been careening towards one another for as long as they’ve existed, drawn together inexorably. He loves the hot puffs of air she’s breathing onto his upper lip, the whimpers she’s unable to contain as he strokes her and strokes her until her cunt is clutching at his fingers, and she’s breathless against his chest.

“Oh,” she whispers after a long moment.

“That ok?”

She nods into his shoulder and presses a kiss to him again. Then her hand is on his dick again, pumping it slowly. “This is ok for tonight?” she asks again and he hates the nervousness in her voice, as though the only part of sex with her could be him inside her. Yeah, he’d like that, but he’d felt just how tight she was around a finger. It wouldn’t be easy getting in and the thought of hurting her to feel good is anathema to him. Especially when he’d almost come in her hand a few minutes before.

“This is great for tonight.” It sounds so corny coming from him like that but her face relaxes into such a smile as she takes him in hand again and he wants to close his eyes and let it wash over him but if he does, then he won’t be able to see her smile anymore and god, he wants to see her smile blistering in his vision, brighter than the hottest sun until the day he dies.

He wishes he could be articulate, or romantic. But the only thing he can manage is to breathe her name as he loses himself to her completely.


	6. Chapter 6

It is a soft awakening, and warm. 

Too frequently, when Rey had been younger, she’d awakened to the sharp pangs of hunger, a stomach that was violently protesting its own emptiness; or it would be too hot and she’d wake feeling feverish, the AT-AT walls all around her absorbing the heat of the sun and it was a race to get out of it as quickly as possible; or nightmares would prod at her until she was awake, cold sweat on her skin, alone in the dark, left behind, unloved, unwanted.

But this is a soft awakening, her body arching up because yes—yes that feels good. So good. His tongue…

She keeps her eyes closed but her hands reach down to find his hair. It’s so soft, and he’d washed it the night before so it’s not greasy this morning. She rubs her fingers over his scalp and hums happily as he licks at her.

He doesn’t always wake her up like this. In fact, usually when he tries, she wakes up from the shift of the bed, his ungainly hulking size shifting the mattress too much underneath her. But she’d slept through it this morning and oh—it’s wonderful to wake up like this.

He’d gotten the idea from her (“Like most of my best ideas,” he’d joked the first time as she was lying there, blissed out and only just awake). One morning—a month ago, maybe; possibly two—he’d been hard when she’d woken up and she’d thrown caution to the wind and shimmied down the bed and woken him with a blowjob. He’d looked close to tears when she’d finished, that wonder and delight that they’re there together, that she loves him, that she wants to jump his bones more than not, that she’d think to wake him up with pleasure when most of his life he’d woken up in pain…

But it’s easier to wake him with a blowjob than it is for him to ease her legs open while she’s still asleep, especially if she’s sleeping on her side—which happens a lot—and especially since she’s a light sleeper in the mornings.

But there is his tongue between her legs, his fingers stroking her thighs, his breath hot against her flesh. There is his hair soft against her fingers, and when at last she opens her eyes because there is nothing in the world quite like the sight of his mouth against her cunt, there are his eyes, beautiful dark brown looking up at her, watching her chest rise and fall, watching heat flush her cheeks and neck.

She shoves her shirt up over her breasts and cups them. She can feel him smile against her core. He likes this view of her, he’d told her once. Sort of how she likes the view of him spread out underneath her, the muscles of his chest and abdomen rippling and sweaty, when she’s riding his hips until she can’t breathe.

It rolls across her like the waves of the lake at first—gentle lappings of pleasure that emanate from her cunt up through her gut, up through her heart until it’s much more like the waves on Kef Bir, crashing over her, making her muscles go tense, her heart lurch, her body protest the unexpected pressure as Ben bears down on her.

And then everything is peace.

She sighs, and arches her back, and pulls herself carefully away from his plying lips. He kisses the inside of her thigh as her heart races in her chest. The good racing. The Ben racing, not fear, not anger, not adrenaline. Just Ben. 

Ben, kissing his way up her legs to her stomach, up her stomach to her chest, up her chest to her neck, up her neck to her lips. He tastes like her and sleep—a horrid combination except that it’s also perfect as she tucks her knees up on either side of his hips and guides him into her. 

They’ve done this enough now that it feels familiar, feels right when he slips into her. They’ve done this enough that she can feel the way his breath shudders a bit at the way she’s still aftershocking around him, gripping him and releasing, holding him then letting go. He loves the feeling of her coming around him. But he’s long past the days when just this much would undo him. 

He begins to pump into her, begins to rock his hips back and forth, back and forth. This time, he doesn’t brush her clit with his fingers as he does it because he knows she’s too sensitive, that it will make it worse for her, rather than better. So instead he takes his turn, Rey wrapping her arms around his neck to kiss him, then rubbing her hands up and down his chest, cupping the muscles of his ass, pulling him closer and closer until he’s choking back some incoherent words and collapsing on top of her.

Yes, it was a soft awakening. The heat of him above her makes her feel safe, protected, wanted. She can feel his heart hammering in his chest. God, how afraid of him dying she’d been. But there is his heart, beating life and love just inches from her own.

“Good morning,” he whispers after a moment or two.

Yes, it was a good morning.

-

It’s not a castle, not by any means. He’s not even sure he’d go so far as to call it good-looking. But they’d made it with their own two hands. Remade it, really. And he’s proud of that.

_ We should tell Maz,  _ Chewie says as they stand there, looking at it. There’s lots of work left to do. Furnishing the thing, for one thing. And deciding if it’s a house or if it’s…

But no. No, he doesn’t get to think about that anymore. He doesn’t have the powers. Even if it  _ would _ make Uncle Luke turn over in his grave to know that Ben was helping teach the Force, that’s not his path anymore. His path, he’s decided, is that he’s going to carve art into every stone from here on out. Rey’s is the path of the warrior, the teacher, the fighter, the Jedi—if that’s what she wants—and his is the path of making work for yourself because you can’t be fucked to figure out what your path is. He’s ok with that.

“We can’t tell Maz. We can’t reach out to the Resistance,” Finn tells Chewie.

_ Yeah, but she’d want to know. And also do you really think she’s still with them? She always hated governance. Likes the fight, but not the scutwork. I bet you anything she’ll make her way back here sometime soon. _

_ She’d like to see it,  _ he repeats after a moment.

Yeah, she would.

“If she comes, she comes,” Rey says. “That’s what the Force wills, if it happens.”

Chewie grumbles something in Shyriiwook that Ben doesn’t understand. Then he marches away. 

“So what next?” Rose asks. Because of course she does. If there’s one thing Ben’s learned about Rose Tico, it’s that she’s a planner. And that she can’t sit still for long. They all have that in common.

“I think furniture would be good,” Finn says, casting a glance at Ben.  _ Am I supposed to build it?  _ Ben wonders from the way that Finn’s looking at him. That actually might be interesting. The next thing he could learn how to do with his hands.

“I meant,” Rose replies, rolling her eyes, “What do we do with it? Now that it’s built?”

Silence stretches between the four of them—not one of them brave enough to say what’s on their mind. 

“It’s whatever we want it to be,” he says at last. “A research lab, or a school, or—” he looks at Rey and his cheeks flood. He’s  _ not _ going to say that out loud. Because he would mean a place for all of them, a place where they could be one another’s family, but he’s not such an idiot as to know what it would  _ sound _ like. 

But Rey says it. “A home.” Her hand slips into his and squeezes. She knows what he means. What he meant. What he will mean. Their Force Bond is broken, but somehow they can read one another better without it these days.

Finn’s arms are crossed over his chest. He’s frowning. 

“What?” Rey asks.

“Nothing,” he says slowly.

She rolls her eyes. “No, you’re thinking about something.”

“I’m just…” he sighs. “Does it have to have one purpose? Like what if it’s people hiding from the remnants of the First Order, or kids who want to learn the Force, or an artist colony,” he shoots Ben a look that Ben doesn’t know how to react to because he doesn’t know whether he loves or hates the idea of just sitting here doing weird art projects until he drops dead. Hell, he could learn how to make his own paints and paintbrushes and—

And prove Finn right. 

He doesn’t know how he feels about that at all.

“Can’t we just see how things go?” he asks.

“So a home, then,” Rey says again. “Our home.”

“I guess,” he says. “Aren’t homes supposed to be quiet and...I don’t know. Aren’t things not supposed to happen at homes?”

Because Finn wouldn’t know. He’d been taken as such a young child. 

But before Ben can open his mouth to say something, Rose snorts. “Homes are the people that make them. So they can be whatever we want them to be and also be a place where we sleep and eat and rest.”

“My mom used to run Senate prep sessions out of our home,” Ben replies. “So we could probably run a Force school out of here.”

Finn shoots him a look he recognizes far too easily because it’s  _ exactly _ how he’d felt when Finn had mentioned an artist’s colony.

That makes him feel better about the artist’s colony.

-

It takes Rey longer than she wants it to decide on how she wants to build her saber. She’s used to the one that had belonged to Ben’s grandfather—the feel of it in her hand, the weight of it. But it doesn’t feel natural to fight with it in some ways. She’s a hellcat who’d learned to fight with a quarterstaff, not a sword. 

She remembers the vision of herself from Kef Bir, with the dual-ended saber, the one that had been a staff. Red had felt wrong to her—had felt like Ben in pain and suffering. But she had liked the form of that.

“Where would I go to make my own?” she asks him. “I need a crystal, right?”

And that’s when she learns that the crystal colors all have different symbolism. Blue and green and red and purple and gold and silver and every possible shade between them. Ben smiles as he drones on about it and she does her best to listen, even though she’s tired. She’ll regret it if she forgets this. She worries it would make him sad if she asked him to write it down so she could remember properly.

She and Finn go off to find crystals. Ben had opted out of going—firmly, and as gracefully as he could manage—and when they return, she and Finn meditate by the lake for days, imbuing their crystals with the Force. Finn’s saber sparkles blue with an edge of purple and it hums through the sunset air when he ignites it for the first time. 

When Rey completes her staff, it shines somehow both gold and silver, depending on whether it is day or night. The sun and the moon, perhaps; light for light or dark. 

And when she swings it it is her—the way she fights, the way she breathes, the way she defends, the way she questions. It is her beginning; it is her hard labor.

She glances at Ben, who is watching her. Finn is showing Rose his, and she’s praising the way he’d put the thing together. Rey swallows as she looks at Ben, nervous all of a sudden.

“It suits you,” he tells her quietly. There’s something jealous in his voice.  _ Better than mine suited me,  _ he hears without prying.

-

“Would you want to teach?” she asks him when they’re curled up in bed together. Her head is on his chest and her fingers are trailing down the line of hair between his belly-button and his groin. 

“I don’t know if I could teach classes,” he says. “But I can help you with things you don’t know. If I know them.”

“You’ll probably know them,” Rey says. “The texts have some information, and Luke’s journals, and your mum taught me a lot. But there’s so much I don’t know. And I feel like you will.”

He swallows. His Force lives on in her, maybe this knowledge can too? Otherwise it would die with him. Which might be for the best but also—

—Balance.

He nods. “If there’s stuff you don’t know—stuff you don’t work out yourself. Because you’re good at that.”

She flushes slightly at the compliment. He loves it when she flushes, when she pulls her lips almost shyly between her teeth.  _ You are everything your grandfather was afraid you’d be _ — _ completely self-made,  _ Ben thinks proudly as he kisses the top of her head. 

And him?

Re-made, he supposes. Self re-made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all sooooo much for reading. i don't usually post-as-i-write so this fic was an adventure for me (whether or not it seems that way to you reading it!) and i'm very glad for the support and love you've all sent my way for it <3 
> 
> if you're reading this, and it's before feb 13 2020, i encourage you to check out [the reylo charity anthology](http://reylocharityanthology.tumblr.com)! there are something like 150 reylo artists and writers who are contributing to this project and you can make a donation of any size to receive a copy! i hope you'll consider checking it out—it's gonna be incredible and everyone's busting their tails to get stuff done <3 
> 
> cheers, and until the next one <3

**Author's Note:**

> [here i am!](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)


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